quotes by Emma Goldman

"If I can't dance to it, it's not my revolution."
— Emma Goldman

"I'd rather have roses on my table than diamonds on my neck."
— Emma Goldman

"The philosophy of Atheism represents a concept of life without any metaphysical Beyond or Divine Regulator. It is the concept of an actual, real world with its liberating, expanding and beautifying possibilities, as against an unreal world, which, with its spirits, oracles, and mean contentment has kept humanity in helpless degradation."
— Emma Goldman (Anarchism and Other Essays)

"If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal. "
— Emma Goldman

"Before we can forgive one another, we have to understand one another. "
— Emma Goldman

" Free love? As if love is anything but free! Man has bought brains, but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love. Man has subdued bodies, but all the power on earth has been unable to subdue love. Man has conquered whole nations, but all his armies could not conquer love. Man has chained and fettered the spirit, but he has been utterly helpless before love. High on a throne, with all the splendor and pomp his gold can command, man is yet poor and desolate, if love passes him by. And if it stays, the poorest hovel is radiant with warmth, with life and color. Thus love has the magic power to make of a beggar a king. Yes, love is free; it can dwell in no other atmosphere. In freedom it gives itself unreservedly, abundantly, completely. All the laws on the statutes, all the courts in the universe, cannot tear it from the soil, once love has taken root."
— Emma Goldman (Marriage And Love)

"Anarchism, then, really stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion; the liberation of the human body from the dominion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government."
— Emma Goldman

"If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal."
— Emma Goldman

"The most violent element in society is ignorance. "
— Emma Goldman

"I wouldn't want a revolution I couldn't dance to."
— Emma Goldman

"The import is not the kind of work woman does, but rather the quality of the work she furnishes. She can give suffrage or the ballot no new quality, nor can she receive anything from it that will enhance her own quality. Her development, her freedom, her independence, must come from and through herself. First, by asserting herself as a personality, and not as a sex commodity. Second, by refusing the right to anyone over her body; by refusing to bear children, unless she wants them; by refusing to be a servant to God, the State, society, the husband, the family, etc., by making her life simpler, but deeper and richer. That is, by trying to learn the meaning and substance of life in all its complexities, by freeing herself from the fear of public opinion and public condemnation. Only that, and not the ballot, will set woman free, will maker her a force hitherto unknown in the world, a force for real love, for peace, for harmony; a force of divine fire, of life-giving; a creator of free men and women.

from Woman Suffrage- 1910"
— Emma Goldman (Anarchism and Other Essays)

"Every daring attempt to make a great change in existing conditions, every lofty vision of new possibilities for the human race, has been labeled Utopian.
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— Emma Goldman

"If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution."
— Emma Goldman

"No great idea in its beginning can ever be within the law. How can it be within the law? The law is stationary. The law is fixed. The law is a chariot wheel which binds us all regardless of conditions or place or time. "
— Emma Goldman (Anarchism and Other Essays)

"If I cannot dance, I want no part of your revolution!"
— Emma Goldman

"It is essential that we realize once and for all that man is much more of a sex creature than a moral creature. The former is inherent, the other is grafted on. "
— Emma Goldman

"To the moralist prostitution does not consist so much in the fact that the woman sells her body, but rather that she sells it out of wedlock. "
— Emma Goldman

"If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution."
— Emma Goldman

"The most unpardonable sin in society is independence of thought."
— Emma Goldman

"Free love? As if love is anything but free! Man has bought brains, but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love. Man has subdued bodies, but all the power on earth has been unable to subdue love. Man has conquered whole nations, but all his armies could not conquer love. Man has chained and fettered the spirit, but he has been utterly helpless before love. High on a throne, with all the splendor and pomp his gold can command, man is yet poor and desolate, if love passes him by. And if it stays, the poorest hovel is radiant with warmth, with life and color. Thus love has the magic power to make of a beggar a king. Yes, love is free; it can dwell in no other atmosphere."
— Emma Goldman